Thanks for the post, D. I think I can answer those questions from my point of view.

(1) Yes, it is very difficult to get to the Higher Ranks and a key point is that since you have to use Strengths to get there, they are no longer available for use once you are at a Higher Rank.

And, yes, being a Higher Rank does increase the chances of a target being put on you. But it depends on how the players want to play it.

If you only ever want one PC and you're not going to take advantage of Field Promotions (and PC death) then the best you can do is 5 ranks up from where you started. I deliberately put the Brigadier one step up from that. So, if anyone wants to go there (and I think that will be a very small subset of players only) then they will have to look for having more than 1 PC and/or at least taking advantage of PC death (if not outright causing it). You could go from Sgt to Lt, then "allow" that PC to die, so putting someone else up to Lt while bringing in a new PC Sarge for yourself. You then wait for the new Lt to get up to Major before getting a Field Promotion somehow (*cough*). But even doing this means you are highly likely to be out of Available Strengths when you get higher up the tree (which is a key and often overlooked point by people focusing on the "prize" of being Brigadier). When you get there you will be vulnerable, often to the characters of players who haven't been as successful at levelling up till now.

On the other hand, it's not assured that you will have a target on your back. I have seen players being "good" sergeants and the Troopers underneath them valuing that, and more than a few times these Sergeants have refused promotion. They're happy where they are.

(2) Anything that isn't fighting is a NFA roll. It can be highly useful in an Encounter to say "I'm sneaking through the enemy bunker looking for the enemy's maps of the planet" (if you have a better NFA than FA). If on your NFA you roll higher than the GM then you won't get killed doing that stuff. Crucially you're not removing any Threat Tokens while rolling NFA, though, so the Threat remains. But as long as you're successful and roll higher than the GM then you're safe and can even leave the Encounter if you move out of "range" (and in the fiction that might even be moving deeper into enemy territory rather than retreating, right?).

(3) If they want to take higher rank my advice is as in the book. Let them do it. As GM you get to be their higher bosses and (even better in my opinion) useless underlings. Sure, from your ivory tower you order an assault on Bosch, but what if the Lts and Sgts are making a pig's ear of it? And just because you're up the ranks doesn't mean you're out of fighting on planets. Consider this from a news story in the UK at the end of April:

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Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, who commanded 1,000 Welsh Guards, was killed by a Taliban roadside bomb after volunteering to take the most dangerous position in an armoured vehicle to inspire his troops. An inquest yesterday heard that only three weeks earlier the 39-year- old wrote a damning memo on the lack of helicopter support in Helmand.